


Fides

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games), Shadow Hearts
Genre: Archival Fic, Community: no_true_pair, Crossover, Don't copy to another site, Heartless Attacks (Kingdom Hearts), Interspecies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25539793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: Axel doesn't believe in stacking the deck.
Relationships: Anastasia & Joachim, Axel/Fides
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12
Collections: Coyo's Old Archive Fic





	Fides

**Author's Note:**

> Back to working on moving stuff over from the spambot...this one's from 2008, for the no_true_pair challenge. I rolled "The beginning of Axel and Yuri's passionate love affair," although really Yuri's kind of third-wheeling it, lol.

He came out of the dark portal into more chaos than even he'd expected, and he'd seen what happened when there wasn't a Keyblade Master handy to keep the Heartless in check. The snowy streets were a mess of panicked civilians and little islands of confused soldiers trying to herd them this way and that. Patches of darkness were slipping up the walls of the old brick buildings on either side of the street, moving oil slicks that slithered through windows and cracks in the casements to the screams of those inside. Somewhere close he heard the booming slap of a Large Body preparing to charge while overhead Nocturnes twisted and wobbled like tops, firecracker-red.

"Man," Axel grumbled to himself, running the ball of his thumb along the cool steel grip of one chakram. "Tough act to follow."

Like a school of mermaids spooked by a kraken, the human tide before him parted all at once, evacuating the street as a Neoshadow rose up in their midst. Its cool yellow eyes peered around with impartial hunger, and Axel knew it saw him. He just wasn't half as interesting as the terrified people fleeing its presence, all those untouched, tasty hearts. Any moment now it would pick its latest meal and go diving back into the street, flowing along quicker than most humans could run. The soldiers and their guns wouldn't be any use at all.

Axel heard them open fire anyway, heard strained shouts between bursts of furious reports, pained snarls and screams. The Neoshadow turned its streamlined head to look, but Axel doubted it even saw what hit it. One ravenous crunch of oversized teeth, and the Heartless exploded in clotted shreds of darkness.

Crouched and growling in the space where the Neoshadow had stood was a hairless, dirt-colored dog-thing, completely eyeless, a band of thick, protective scales streaking down its back from snout to tail-tip. Its shoulders were massive, its claws as impressive as its fangs, and the way it swung its blunt head from side to side convinced Axel at a glance that the lack of eyes wasn't exactly a handicap. Just up the street, soldiers were firing on two more of its kind, half the squad already fallen under the beasts' claws. Not the good guys, then. Axel wasn't surprised. If he didn't know better, he'd say that was a Barghest.

Only _that_ couldn't be right, because that would mean the Heartless were just the beginning of this world's troubles.

When a little girl in cute braids and expensive furs came tearing out of a side-street, Axel felt an uncomfortable prickling where his heart should have been. The kid looked even younger than Roxas, had to be crazy, since she was running right _for_ that thing.

"Get out of my city!" she shouted at it, clearly incensed, and let something fly, winged and metallic, from her cupped hands.

Whatever it was, it hit the Barghest smack in the face, sending it skittering back with a yelp, pawing madly at its muzzle. Axel watched with arched brows as the egg-shaped contraption flew back to the kid's hands, but there wasn't time to decide whether he ought to step in and help or let nature take its course.

"Princess!" a huge blond man roared, charging into the street after the girl without a second thought. If that was a princess, then this must be her bodyguard, but Axel just couldn't see it. The guy was impressively muscled, sure, but he was ridiculously underdressed for the weather in these parts, and slung carelessly over one bulging shoulder was what looked like a scale model of an ocean liner.

What the _hell_?

The blond waded into the fray like a circus strongman gone wrong, swinging that six-foot miniature ship like an oversized club. One hit, two, and the Barghest was lying flat in the street, three-clawed paws scrabbling weakly as the princess' defender hefted his surreal weapon for the final blow.

Squinching his eyes shut in unconscious mirror of the princess, Axel winced away as the boat came down and the Barghest was still.

"Eww," he thought he heard the little girl say, but when he glanced back at her, she was giving the big guy an imperious look, no trace of squeamishness in her bright green eyes. "What took you so long? And where's Yuri?"

The big man deflated rather visibly, but there was no trace of resentment in his booming, good-natured voice. "We were separated after he changed. His fusions are a lot faster than me."

"We have to find him. Monsters are one thing, but there's more of those shadows every minute. We'll run out of magic before we get them all."

"Do you think he'd have better luck with his fusions?"

"We're going to find out. Come on!"

Axel watched the princess run off--the strongman following like a big, loyal dog--and shook his head. He couldn't even work up a proper case of ire over being ignored. Almost nobody noticed a Nobody, not unless they were actively trying to attract attention, and those folks clearly had other things on their minds. And they were _used_ to fighting monsters, it seemed. Just what kind of world had he stumbled into?

The assignment had seemed pretty simple at first. When the Heartless destroyed a world, you got Nobodies. Cannon fodder, mostly--Dusks and the like--but what were the odds that out of an entire planet you wouldn't get at least one _strong_ Nobody like them? The trick was finding that candidate _before_ he got his heart shredded, then sticking around to see how things played out. Axel wasn't like Vexen--he wouldn't help things along or stack the deck against the poor schmuck, no matter what his orders were--but if it happened, it happened. Wasn't Axel's problem, and he had his own missing heart to consider.

"Yuri, huh?"

He started after the princess and the strongman, following them deeper into the maze of streets and fleeing crowds, keeping his eyes peeled for his future coworker.

***

Panting a bit over the hard run those weird shadows had given him, Yuri found himself deep in the heart of Petrograd with no idea where the others were, no clues to tell him which way to go. He'd been borrowing Puera's form, hoping Light would counter shadows, but it hadn't been that simple, and he'd forgotten how fast a fusion could move when its feet never touched the ground. He'd been so caught up in the chase, in fact, in the smooth flow of his fusion's speed, that he hadn't noticed when he'd outdistanced the others. He'd had to _wrest_ himself back to his own form before he completely lost control of the change, and he probably ought to give his mind time to settle before he tried that again.

He was just lucky it'd been Puera, one of the most forgiving of the monsters in his head. Nox would happily have seized the chance to take control, would have abandoned the fight in a heartbeat to find more _interesting_ things to do, and Yuri didn't particularly want a list. Amon would have wreaked havoc, but he wasn't crazy enough to summon Amon without knowing where the living shadows popping up from every corner had come from, what they were. In fact, he wasn't touching any of his Dark fusions until he figured that out. For all he knew, he'd end up drawing the things right to him. And then maybe they'd make him their chief. Weirder things had happened.

Straightening up and rubbing absently at his nose--three degrees from freezing off, and he wasn't exactly a hothouse flower--he took another good look at the alley, the vague smears of darkness left behind after Puera's Nova attack took out the pack of shadows he'd been hunting and the broken line of the roofs beyond. It looked like he wasn't that lost after all, not if he could see the Winter Palace from here. Anastasia had probably led the others there already, was bound to be blasting shadows right and left for daring to invade her home.

Something shifted at the far end of the alley, back where the early evening shadows painted everything dark and dim. Furtive but not hurried, whatever it was moved with liquid grace, controlled as a dancer only jointed weird, or with oddly-shaped limbs, or maybe just plain _wrong_. He was used to 'wrong' by now, but it never really stopped being a surprise when he ran into some new form of it.

This one was white and grey, eyeless, with a wedge-shaped head and a zipper-toothed mouth. Its arms ended in fingerless spikes, and a strange symbol like a spiked cross fused with half a heart was branded on its brow. Something about the slick way it walked was fascinating, hypnotic, even as it made his eyes itch with the _weird_. Maybe it was supposed to do that. It certainly distracted him from the dozen of its kind slinking after it, heading right for him in mincing lockstep.

"Fuck." These weren't shadows. He didn't know _what_ these were, and though Nox had started hissing inside his head about how _helpful_ the demon could be, he just didn't buy it. He was tired, but he wasn't stupid. Only there really were too many of those things for him to deal with on his own.

Puera was willing. Miserati was _interested_ , and that sort of worried him, but he wasn't sure Light was what he needed right now. Roger would probably yell at him for thinking too much in black and white, but if the black monsters were made of clotted darkness, then wouldn't it just figure that the white ones were just the opposite?

So Light was out, and Dark was just asking for trouble, and damn it, he was tired of being cold.

Maybe a little too tired. He couldn't really say how much Fire he'd need, but he'd only meant to give the beasts inside his head a little nudge. These monsters didn't look that tough. He thought he might hit them with a Magma, see how that went over, worry about it later if he needed something stronger. He hadn't thought he was asking for that much.

Only his nudge was more like a push, and he could _feel_ the drain on his mind as his strongest Fire fusion flexed its vast bulk and filled him to overflowing from the inside out, power pushing against skin and spirit. His own flesh was shifting, reshaping itself, bones bending against the tight lashings of muscle and sinew. He wanted to scream--the big ones _hurt_ , goddamn it, and the inhuman ones were worse--but just before pain could break his concentration and his hold on the fusion, everything snapped into place in a glittering ripple of flames. Heavy armor caged his reworked limbs as he remembered how to breathe in another's body, how to sit back and let that other mind surge to the forefront, a force he could ride and direct even though it wasn't _him_. He wouldn't have had the first idea what to do with the massive sword clutched in one oversized hand, would have choked and fought against the visored helm.

The Fire spirit's amused contempt echoed to him like it was his own. He wouldn't need the sword against creatures like these. Puera's puny spells had cost him nothing, and they could never burn him dry. He could burn and burn until there were no enemies left, and oh, yeah, _now_ he remembered why he hated fusing with Fides. The damned thing never knew when to quit.

***

There weren't just Shadows on the ground now. There were Dusks, more than he'd expected, and though he could have stopped them and compelled them, he chose to follow them instead. They were drawn to strong hearts too, after all, and probably had a better idea of where he was going than he did himself. Tracking their gliding march through snow-covered streets, he hunched his shoulders deeper into his coat and called on his own inner fire to warm him. If this was the Superior's idea of a joke--sending him to an icy doom in some low-tech backwater--then one of them had apparently lost his sense of humor along with his heart.

He was ready when the Dusks suddenly picked up the pace, their fix on the target steady and strong. Lengthening his stride, he decided to come late to the party but not too late, curious enough to see what this one was like before the pieces needed to be picked up and glued back together. One look, that was all.

He was closer than he realized. The Dusks were streaming into an alley just up ahead, and in the dull winter light he could see the person they'd been chasing. The guy looked all right, nothing special, a wild-haired twenty-something with a cocky smirk and fierce red eyes--and okay, maybe that was a bit on the strange side, but he'd seen stranger. This one looked like he was used to fighting, fists raised defensively before him with metal claws held stiffly between his fingers, but an entire pack of Dusks was sure to be too much for someone who hadn't even seen a Heartless before today. Pity, really; that smirk reminded him a little of Roxas, a little of himself.

Axel grimaced, blew out a sigh and...fuck. He ought to tell the Dusks to back off of the guy, leave him to the Heartless. They'd get him sooner or later, so what was the point of rushing things? This whole world was on the way out; it was just a matter of time.

He opened his mouth, took a deep breath--and choked on it as something fixed a hook behind his ribs and _pulled_.

Even though he saw the whole thing, he didn't quite believe it at first. It was one thing to go traipsing off to Atlantica or Halloween Town and change yourself to fit in; it was another to watch a perfectly normal guy bulk up and out in the form of a huge, armored monster, one that came wreathed in flames. It was the flames that got him. That monster drew Axel like nothing else, like Roxas but _different_. It didn't wake ghost traces of the heart he lacked; it reached right down into the heart of everything he still was, curled its hand around his soul, and yeah, that thing was fire, all fire. A huge, ugly juggernaut of heat and fury, and it was _beautiful_.

Thick red armor grated softly as the creature moved, stepping forward to meet the confused, milling pack of Dusks, lifting its free hand and splaying its fingers out wide. Axel knew exactly what was about to happen, would have known blindfolded by the way his own fire leapt inside him in sympathy.

Flames exploded outward in a searing circle that widened until it engulfed the alley from wall to wall, burning hotter than wildfire, hotter than dragonflame. That was hellfire, or he was Jack Frost, and even after the Dusks were charred to ash and sparks, the flames crackled and jumped, melting snow to steam and baking the bricks of the nearby walls until they whistled and popped. Untouched by its own conflagration, the fire spirit stood massive and unmovable in the heart of the flames, helmed head turning slowly Axel's way. It knew he was here. Maybe it could feel him the same way he could feel it. A vague flicker of caution warned him to back off now, take a portal back and wait for the body this thing rode to show up on the World That Never Was.

It was _fire_ , though, and fire had never hurt him.

He was grinning as he started forward instead, the wild, bright kind that made most people want to dodge him like a bill collector or murder him on sight. He kept his hands empty as he stepped into the flames, feeling their heat as something warm and friendly and satisfying, and he read the spirit's startlement in the way it drew itself up stiffly, leaned back, not yet giving ground.

"Oh, that's nice," he purred in a drowsy hum, "real nice. Especially after freezing my ass off in this dump. So do you just change your shape, or how much of that guy is left?"

He had its attention, that was for sure. The creature's sword still dangled forgotten from one monstrous fist, its other hand limp and relaxed by its side.

***

Fides watched the lean human walk into the heat of his flames with something akin to shock, watched the way his fire lapped at the human's skin like hounds greeting a favored child too long absent. The red spikes of the human's hair were ruffled by the burning air inside the inferno until they resembled flames themselves, but it was the human's smile that caught his attention, sharp and fierce and unafraid.

"So," the stranger asked, "do you just change your shape, or how much of that guy is left?"

Unexpected. Mortals rarely spoke to him unless it was to beg or curse. Even the Harmonixer spoke to him rarely, unless it was to command.

 _Fides_ , he told the little human, uncertain whether he would be understood. _I am Fides_.

For a moment he thought he might have startled the creature, until a fox-colored brow arched, curiosity glittering back at him from bright green eyes. Sap green, leaf green. Tempting to see how well they'd hold a flame.

"Fides," the human echoed, and he felt a hot shiver lick up his spine at the sound of his true name on another's tongue. Too late--he was already bound to the Harmonixer--but pleasing nonetheless. "I think I was looking for a Yuri."

 _The Harmonixer_ , he agreed, nodding once.

"The what?"

 _The human whose body I ride_.

Now the creature's smile was a wide, white arc, pure as bone. "I thought it might be him. But you're Fire...."

 _Yes_. The human didn't hesitate where it was safe, didn't stop, came close enough that Fides could smell its heat, the ash of its skin and the woodsmoke flicker of its hair. Dimly he could feel the Harmonixer's uneasiness, denial and disbelief and the vague sting of a protest swiftly ignored-- _Hey_ \--

The human reached up, drew a fingertip along the line of his visor and purred, wasn't burned.

"What do you look like under there?"

The human was tall for its kind, bold as a demon, but it was so thin, so _small_. Fides could have broken it in one hand.

The hungry light in its eyes told him it didn't care.

***

Axel sort of wanted to laugh at himself, sort of wanted to run like hell. This wasn't like playing with Zexion or Demyx, or even Lexaeus that one time when he'd been really, really drunk and bored enough not to negotiate beforehand who got to be on top. This was some sort of monster, or demon, or who _knew_ what, and--it sort of freaked him out that that didn't seem to be stopping him. But only sort of.

Its legs were jointed wrong, like an Olympian satyr's, only satyrs didn't get this big. Minotaurs, maybe. And its hands were fucking huge, cased in gauntlets big enough to make an excellent start on a new suit of armor for a normal person. The idea of _doing_ anything with the thing was patently ludicrous, but he reached up anyway, and the big guy stayed perfectly still as he settled his palms on the sides of its helm and tugged, lifting it free.

He'd seen the flickering white flares of its eyes, the vibrant flag of its long, red hair, and he hadn't known which to believe: flame or flesh? Fides was both, its strange face--not so much bestial as fierce taken to the nth power--dark-skinned and whole under a pale sheen of leaping flame. There was nothing human in its stare at all, but Axel couldn't stop thinking about it, what it'd be like to be held down, covered, fucked raw by fire itself.

When he fisted his hands in its hair and tugged, it stooped down to meet him, eyes half-closing in pleasure as he took its mouth, wary of the sharpness of its teeth. It tasted like heat--ashen and metallic, like licking sparks off an anvil--and it hummed a growling sort of purr at him as one big hand came to rest against his back. Maybe Roxas was right--maybe _everybody_ was right--and he liked his fire a bit too much. And maybe he didn't _give_ a shit.

He leaned into the thing, devouring its mouth, only something was changing--the heavy mane threaded through his fingers lightened, shortened to a ragged, careless mop, and suddenly he wasn't straining upwards, he was turning his head just so to find the perfect angle for someone almost exactly his own height. The hand fitted to the small of his back twitched, slid to catch at his hip, and suddenly he was being shoved away, his eyes flying open to meet a shocked pair that were deep red, purely human, indignant and disgusted and lost.

"What the...who...you _kissed_ me!"

Already the fires were dying down all around them, but through Axel arched a brow and waited, the other man didn't wade in swinging. The guy was freaked, no question about that, but no one had ever actually _complained_ about one of Axel's kisses before, and it didn't look like this was going to break his record.

"Axel," he said at last, "and I wasn't kissing you; I was kissing your...fusion?"

" _Fuck_ ," Yuri grated, staring at him incredulously. Axel was inclined to ignore the mutters that followed seeing as they didn't make much sense, something that sounded like, "I'd expect that from Nox, but...."

Something was weird, though, and he took a curious sniff just to be sure. "You smell like the Dark," he said, "not Fire." Not anymore.

Yuri was still staring, but this time he looked exasperated. "Well, yeah. It's a _fusion_." Axel must have looked a bit too blank, a bit too cagey. "Freaky monsters inside my head?"

"Harmonixer." That was what Fides had called him.

"Who _are_ you?"

"Nobody," he said with a smirk, knowing Yuri would get the joke soon enough...only that drove the smile from his face, something unsettling and new lodging in the pit of his stomach. It couldn't be regret, because he didn't have a heart to make it real, but...he didn't want to see all that fire lost to the Heartless.

And that look of 'Oh, _hell_ no, I am _not_ turned on' was just about irresistible.

"Those black things," he said, one more snap decision he hoped he wouldn't pay for later. "They're called Heartless. The white ones are Dusks. If you leave them to their own devices, they'll kill each other off...but if there's a strong heart in the area," he added, stepping forward to tap one long finger against the Harmonixer's chest, "they'll make a beeline right for you. If I were you, I'd keep moving...but it's a losing game anyway. The Heartless take hearts and make more Heartless; they'll be aiming for the heart of the world eventually, and then it's all over."

"How do we stop them?" Yuri demanded, shivering a little and knocking Axel's hand away...but he didn't give any ground, not one step, glaring with the sort of stubborn bravado Axel never had learned how to ignore.

"You don't. You wait for the Keyblade Master to come along and save your asses. And if those things catch you...you get to learn a whole new set of rules."

He could tell that was going to get him an argument, and he was looking forward to it, he truly was. Only all at once there was a clatter of running footsteps far down the alley, some other redhead shouting "Yuri!" like they were old friends, and she looked like she meant business with that sword.

For his part, Yuri didn't even turn, though whether it was because he was too canny to take his eyes off Axel or because he trusted his friends to have everything in hand--or both--was anyone's guess. Axel smirked, took a step back and threw out a hand, opening a portal that would take him back to base. "I'll be watching for you," he promised, figuring he'd give it a day, maybe two, before this guy did something hotheaded and got himself torn right down the middle.

Only sometimes they got lucky, and Axel found he really hoped this one would. So he shrugged as he backed towards the portal, holding those confused red eyes--more like blood than fire--and said, "Or I'll see you around." Look him up, maybe, see if he could badger the guy into letting off some steam, find out how deep the fire went.

It was that half-second flash of unwilling curiosity that crossed Yuri's face that made it more promise than threat, more something to look forward to than one more thing he'd have to resign himself to going without. No matter how Axel found the guy next, Heartless or whole, giving the guy a fighting chance was going to make things _interesting_.


End file.
